
Allegory and Epic in English Renaissance Literature
Heroic Form in Sidney, Spenser, and Milton
Kenneth Borris(Author)
Cambridge University Press
Published on 18. January 2009
Book
Paperback/Softback
336 pages
978-0-521-10009-0 (ISBN)
Description
Challenging conventional notions that literary allegorism declined precipitously around 1600, Kenneth Borris reassesses the Renaissance relations between allegory and heroic poetry, particularly in the major texts of Sidney, Spenser and Milton. Through wide-ranging consideration of Homeric and Virgilian reception and its influence on both continental and English literary theory, he shows that allegorical epic tended to double for and displace epic throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Borris offers a fresh approach to the interaction of allegory with literary genres; focusing on epic, he further analyses the distinctive codes and conventions that constituted the generic repertoire of Renaissance allegorical epic poetry. Whereas standard literary history assumes Sidney opposes allegory, and that Milton minimises or rejects it in following Spenser, Borris's detailed readings demonstrate that Sidney and Milton are also major allegorists, and that Spenser remained so even in the latter books of The Faerie Queene. This book was first published in 2000.
Reviews / Votes
"...contains a wealth of useful material" ChoiceMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
6 Halftones, unspecified
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
547 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-521-10009-0 (9780521100090)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Content
List of illustrations; Note on translations; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. The formalization of allegory in Heroic poetry; 2. Allegory and the metamorphoses of Heroic form; 3. Reconfiguring the Epic repertoire; 4. Arcadian allegorical epic; 5. Sidneian transformations of Heroic poetry; 6. Arthurian configurations: Spenser's continued Heroic allegorism; 7. Spenser's Heroic allegory and the politics of ennobled virtue; 8. 'Union or communion deified': universal analogies of Milton's pattern-hero; 9. 'So God with man unites': Heroic community in one greater man; 10. 'In mysterious terms judged best': Paradise Lost and allegorical poetics.